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Thursday, July 5, 2012

Gluten Hates Me’s Pupusas

You are probably asking yourself, what the heck is a pupusa? I had never heard of them before seeing Marlow’s post on them. I’m sure glad she’s spreading the word, though, because they are really tasty and naturally gluten free!

A pupusa is El Salvador’s version of the tortilla. It’s basically a flatbread-style corn tortilla stuffed with cheese. With just three ingredients and a recipe you can easily memorize, it definitely qualifies as very simple! All you need is warm water, cheese and masa (for those of you not familiar with Mexican staples, masa is a very finely ground corn flour).

Masa can be found easily in most grocery stores – just look in the baking section with the other flours. It’s also really cheap, unlike a lot of other GF flours!

The recipe I used can be found on Marlow’s pupusas post – basically just equal parts masa and warm water. I did end up using the extra 1/4 cup water that she did, and the consistency seemed spot on. I also added a little bit of salt.

I used my cookie batter scoop to portion out the dough balls, then flattened them out on a sheet of wax paper.

Patting them out was a bit challenging for me – the dough kept sticking to my hands. I realized that rinsing my hands off regularly really helped, and I also started patting them out on the countertop instead of between my palms.

After stuffing them, I flattened them out a bit per her suggestion and ended up with a pupusa about the size of a small pancake.

Then it was time to fry!

I used more oil than the “pinky nail” she described, but I was using a stainless steel pan (next time, I’m planning to use nonstick). I fried them about 5 minutes per side on medium-high, and they came out looking great.

They were nice and crispy, and the addition of some salsa livened up the flavor a lot. I think I need to work on getting the patties a bit thinner though, since they were still a tiny bit raw tasting inside after reaching a perfect golden color outside. I’m sure with a little practice I’ll get the hang of it!